


Something

by Cryowen



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:09:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryowen/pseuds/Cryowen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's quiet, and Spades Slick has started "thinking" again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something

**Author's Note:**

> Another older piece, but one I'm fond of. If I can get the follow-up to fall into proper words, that'll get put up too. Inspired by Sanna's SS/PS artwork.

* * *

 

For a moment, everything is quiet. The sound of rain against the bedroom window, a distant roll of thunder. Quiet. Calm.  
  
Your name is Spades Slick and, despite popular opinion, you aren’t always angry.  
  
The state of perpetual foul-temperedness you stew in is not your sole emotion, no. It is, however, the safest. The safest for you, anyway. The safest for everyone and everything else, indirectly, by way of Droog.  
  
No, the anger is neither constant or pleasant. Necessary, but not always enjoyable. Quiet, however, is dangerous. You can think when it's quiet, outside the apartment and inside your own head. Thinking, at least for you, is rarely good. You depress yourself easily. You have a drink. You think about Derse, and the war, and you have another drink. You think about how you built this city, and how empty your life is despite that, and you think about Her. You have another drink. All you’ve done, and it still isn’t enough. You can’t touch her, can’t kill her. Snowman is the universe, she allows you to exist. She allows your sorry, empty, pathetic little life to exist. You persist, as you always have, at her whim.  
  
You try to get angry. You can’t think when you’re angry. You can’t think, can’t be miserable, can’t give a damn about this abstract metaphorical shit when you’re angry.  
  
You can’t.  
  
Too tired, maybe, or too deep. Too drunk. You can’t move from your bed, a bottle of whiskey on the sidetable, not even to close the window where the rain gets in. A day or two later, when he hasn’t heard from you and you haven’t answered the phone, Droog lets himself in. He always knows when you need him, how you need him, what you need. Maybe not what you want, no, but what’ll get you back on your feet and in the right frame of mind again.  
  
He starts by removing the bottle of whiskey to the kitchen.  
  
He’ll take off his hat, coat, vest, and leave them in the hall, hanging over the back of a chair by the door.  
  
He rolls up his shirtsleeves as he comes back into your room. He’ll tell you to get up, to move your sorry ass, to have the grace to look him in the eye, at least.  
  
You won’t. Won’t even say a word.  
  
He broke your jaw last time, on the first hit. Must have been having a bad day himself.  
  
That’s how it goes, anyway. He’ll beat the living shit out of you and, somewhere between passing out and throwing up, you start to fight back. He’s taller than you, longer in the limbs, and just downright bigger than you. Droog’ll win, he always does, but you’ll be pissed as hell that he had the nerve to come into your apartment and proceed to knock the crap out of you. Split his knuckles on your face.  
  
Droog always knows what you need. Usually, almost always, that means you being pissed as hell. You don’t live life, you fight it. Every moment, of every day, you’re fighting.  
  
Some days, you just need someone physical to fight against, without that abstract metaphorical shit. Most people will do anything to avoid a fight. Not you. And on the days when you’re worth more dead than alive? Neither does Droog.  
  
It's quiet now. The sound of rain against the bedroom window, plink-plink on the fire escape, letting you know the world exists outside. A distant roll of thunder, like the fury and agitation that’ll flare up again at the first given chance. But for now it is quiet. For now, it is calm. For now, for once, you’re content to lay in bed. Your head rests on a Prospitian pillow. His chest rises and falls, his heart beats steadily under your ear. He smells like cheap aftershave and cotton, and high-fructose corn syrup. He’s your…  
  
Something. Problem Sleuth is your Something. Lover, rival… Neither sound quite right.  
  
He isn’t like Droog, who’ll beat you senseless because, in a way, it's his job. Sleuth doesn’t fight without passion. The two of you will spend the better part of a night beating on each other, throwing punches and knocking the other down, only to collapse into bed laughing like complete idiots. Or naked. Sometimes both.  
  
What used to bother you, though, was how calmly you accepted the beating Sleuth might hand out, if you were off your game. That’s what it was between you, a game. No matter how furious and seething you might have been when you hit him in his stupid face for being stupid and charming and running his stupid mouth, it was never what you’d call a ‘real’ fight. You weren’t trying to kill or maim or seriously injure one another. You were just… something. Blowing off steam? Maybe. Point is, you never had to be angry around Sleuth. Never have. You can lay in bed, listening to his heartbeat and watching the rain, with nothing in your head but a pleasant hum that isn’t from booze and isn’t his quiet snoring.  
  
You don’t have to be angry around Sleuth, not really. You don’t have to fight, and still it never gets dull. You don’t think about Derse, or the war, or how empty your life would be without the Crew and this idiot in bed with you. You don't think about black streets and dark alleys, except for how you can catch Sleuth in one any night of the week. You don’t think about the Felt, or how Sleuth will be waiting for you when you get knocked into next week a month early. And you most certainly do not think about Snowman, and how she can never take this away from you, the universe be damned. She isn’t everything, because Sleuth is something. Your Something. And sometimes, just sometimes, ‘Something’ sounds like ‘Everything’, but that’s just stupid, like the lazy lump you’re using for a pillow. You’d laugh, but it's quiet, and Sleuth is still asleep. So you smile instead, listening to his heartbeat and the rain.


End file.
